12 August 2010:My book now has its own promotional websitewhere, apart from basic info, you can also readseveral excerpts, so do please visit:ENOUGH! Islamophobia

04 August 2010:My book ENOUGH! Islamophobia is just aboutready and should be available in about 2 weeks.Awaiting first printed copy, when that hasarrived and has been checked over, the bookwill be released.Updates to follow here on SiteNews and also onits own separate weblog, to follow in a few days.

31 July 2010:Site is in the process of being reworkedto reflect new domain www.IBRAHEEM.dk -meaning that my current domainsMYSPEAK.info and MYSPEAK.orgwill gradually be phased out.Your patience appreciated!

13 September 2007:MYSPEAK will attend the GPU in Londonin November - more here

09 September 2007:All posts from Terrorism/Politics now mergedinto this parent weblog, labels will be updatedover the next couple of days after which themerger should be transparent to readers.Meanwhile, seek by Topics in sidebar.

30 June 2007:New post On Nudity27 June 2007:I have now "migrated" the 3 separate weblogsfor Islam/Religion, Travel, and Poems/Musingsand merged them into this, for simplicity.Unfortunately, I have lost your comments inthe process - feel free to comment again!!

26 June 2007:New separate weblog for all my poems -MYSPEAK-poemsThis is using a different template in order toavoid line-overflow and to enable a largerfont to be used, to aid readability, hence alsothe soft colours - I want to make it easy foryour eyes to read what I write!For the time being, old links / weblogs forpoems will stay.

29 December 2009

First of all, my thanks to IslamOnline.net (IOL)'s Euro-Muslims Zone for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts with IOL audiences -not only here in Europe but across the wider Muslim world.

Some of you may know me already -from my website www.MYSPEAK.infoor maybe from the Global Peace and Unity (GPU) event in London where I had my own stand.

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Why Viking Muslim?Because it fits in neatly with the overall Euro-Muslim context and places me not only in Europe but in North-West Europe and specifically in Scandinavia as my Viking forefathers were the men and women from Denmark, Sweden and Norway around 1000 years ago.

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A practical note:I shall add the posts here in the archive sometime after submitting them to IOL.I shall add all the posts to the archive exactly asI submitted them, that is, they will not reflectany changes IOL may have made, likewise IOLmay occasionally decide not to publish aparticular post - but it will still appear hereon the archive.

30 August 2009

There you may or may not find my latestpost, if my current post is not on the frontpage of Euro-Muslims, it may have "droppedoff" after a week or so - if so, you can searchon Euro-Muslims for the name of my weblog"Viking-Muslim" and that should get you someresults.

Or you can click on the link below to go to myown archive of all posts submitted to Islam-Online:

24 November 2008

Standard dictionary definitions of integrate and assimilate are roughly as follows:

Integrate -to blend into a functioning or unified whole

Assimilate -to absorb into the culture of a population

In Denmark the difference between the two can be expressed simply bymentioning the names of two of the country's best known Muslims -Asmaa Abdol-Hamid and Naser Khader, both grown up in Denmark.They are excellent examples of integration and assimilation respectively.

Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, mid-twenties, a social worker who wears the headscarf andrefuses to shake the hands of strange men, who ran in last November's generalelection for the Unity-List (red-green alliance) and vowed to wear the headscarfin parliament if elected (which sadly she was not), describes herself as "a humbleslave of Allah" -

Naser Khader, mid-forties, already a long-serving member of parliament, nowleading his own new party (which is disintegrating about a year after being founded...), not married but cohabiting, three children, one from a formerrelationship of his, one from a former relationship of hers, and one child together(one might say a typically Danish situation!), claims to be proud to be a Muslim,yet most of his private and some of his public life are incompatible with Islamicvalues.

So - do you wish to integrate or assimilate?

All the signs are that the vast majority of Euro-Muslims will wish to integratebut will refuse to assimilate.

This article carries on from the last one, about the EU.To recap: In round figures there are 300 million Americans, less than5% of total world population, whereas we are now 500 million EU citizens,or nearly 8% of humanity.Muslims make up about 20% of mankind but have a combined influencein grotesque disproportion to their huge numbers.Now, if Muslim nations and populations wished to join forces and create theirown version of the US or the EU it would be a perfectly natural and understandableaspiration and of course they should be free to make that decision, and toimplement it, should they wish to go ahead.

Would the Christian West tolerate it?By all indications and actions, the answer is a clear no - it would not.But of course it should if it wishes to be taken seriously by the Muslim world.After all, how can you deny others what you have already chosen to haveyourself?If nuclear power is good for the Christian West it must be good for Islamic Iran!What is good for the Israelis must be good for the Palestinians!

It seems to me that the problem can be reduced to this:The Christian West does not really care what Muslims believe in, the nameof our prophet, how many times a day we pray and where we turn when we do so,in other words, it is not the faith itself which it sees as "a problem and a threat"but it has a paranoid fear of that faith being implemented at the practical level,it is political Islam which represents the red line to the Christian West, a red linethat when crossed, as it was in Iran in 1979, and as it was about to be inAlgeria 1991/92, and as it was in occupied Palestine January 2006, brings animmediate reaction of zero-tolerance.It seems inevitable to me that a modern version of the Caliphate will becomeso irresistible to the world's Muslims that it will become a reality and probablysooner than most of us think.Is there any other way for Muslims to exert the influence which is rightfully theirs?

The rest of the world, and in particular the collective Christian West, will haveto come to terms with both the idea and the reality - and the sooner the better.Failing to do so would be the definitive proof that it is characterised by patheticimmaturity and staggering arrogance.

Whatever we may think of the EU as it is today we should never lose track of the simple fact that it was established primarily to prevent anotherdevastating war on our continent.For the record, World War 1 cost about 20 million lives, the majority in uniform,whilst World War 2 cost a staggering 70 million lives, the majority civilians.The vision of the common Europe's founding fathers, French politiciansClaude Monnet and Robert Schumann (Luxembourg-born),was disarmingly simple (pun intended!):If some important national governments (read: primarily France and Germany)could somehow be persuaded to relinquish sovereignty over their coal and steelindustries, which would then be placed under a separate non-national authority,that would at a stroke make terrible wars between those nations practicallyimpossible as they would no longer control the very raw materials and basicindustries required for heavy weapons manufacture.

It is to the eternal credit of Monnet and Schumann that they succeededand in 1953 the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was born,which later (1957) evolved into the European Economic Community (EEC),which became the European Community (EC) which became the EuropeanUnion (EU).

You can always find something to criticise and you may argue over thesmall print here and there but overall, in my opinion, the whole experimenthas been, and is, a resounding success.

I am not saying that there will never be small local wars again in Europe,possibly possibly even within the EU itself, but will France and Germany(who had gone to war over the natural resources in their border region .....times in a century) ever go to war with each other again? Unthinkable!

Externally the EU seems to be just a "softer" version of the US.What I personally would like to see is the EU distancing itself from America.I am not suggesting that the two should have nothing to do with eachother, of course they should, but only insofar as it does not damage thereputation of the EU as a whole.

Almost everything the GW Bush administration has done around the world(and at home but that is an internal American problem) during its 8 yearsin power has been illegal and barbaric - and tragically the EU hascollectively gone along with most of it and tolerated the rest, seeminglyunable to find a voice and a purpose of its own.Make no mistake: In round figures there are 300 million Americans, less than5% of total world population, whereas we are now 500 million EU citizens, ornearly 8% of humanity.If democracy matters, and we are endlessly told that it does, and if democracyhas anything to do with numbers, which surely must be the case, then it is hightime the EU starts exerting the influence which is rightfully its own.

Those Happy Danes!!Recently another survey, and this one much more comprehensive than thelast, now covering 80,000 persons in around 170 countries, concluded thatthe Danes are the happiest people on planet Earth, confirming the findingsof the previous one.

Living here you would not know it and I do not know whether to laugh or crywhen I read such reports.True, it is a well-run little country and on the whole things are going prettywell materially speaking but do not be fooled.There are serious tensions close to the surface and big problems out in theopen, particularly as regards immigration and xenophobia, issues exploitedso well by the Danish People's Party and its witch-hunt against all thingsIslamic, but there are other problems too.

Currently 300,000 persons out of a total population of 5,4 million, or ca 5,5%of all Danes, are waiting for significant or serious operations - for a wealthylittle country that is a staggering and disgraceful figure.It is generally accepted that some of those waiting will die before the over-worked system gets round to them. Unacceptable is too mild a word.Yet the government, re-elected last November, has seen fit to join the illegaland barbaric wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and has had noproblems finding the funds to do so. Priorities anybody?And hundreds of thousands, probably more than 10%, are permanently onsome kind of "happiness-pills" (valium etc) prescribed by their doctors,and seeing the world through medically-induced rose-tinted glasses mayindeed distort the results of surveys like these!

Other statistics are perhaps more enlightening:The Nordic countries plus Austria and Switzerland, all at or near the topof the happiness-scores, are all world-leaders when it comes to rates ofsuicide!

Happy Danes? Another way to answer is like this - these kinds of surveyscan not ask the opinions of all those who have already commited suicide!!

Courtesy costs nothing - just a little effort!I used to contribute regularly to various on-line discussion fora onDanish websites. Should you wish to join in, a word of caution:If you voice any support at all for the Palestinian causeor attempt to explain a little of the background for this ongoing tragedy,or you admit to being a local convert to Islam, type in your message,hit "Enter" and just sit back and wait for 5 minutes.Then the replies come in, not replies really but streams of abuse andverbal brutalisations, using the most foul language imaginable of whichexpressions like "Go to Hell you bloody Islamo-fascist" is mild enoughto permit quoting here.

Occasionally I would reply sweetly that "A little courtesy costs nothingand what are you trying to tell me?" - and they would come back in aneven more vulgar manner. What is the matter with these people?

For the future of Denmark and the wider world one can only hope thatit is the same very small group of people which is behind those replies,perhaps using multiple identities each.I am sure they are not jokers but are serious andreally mean what they write.The bad news is that, whoever they are, heated debate is one thing,this is something quite different. What happened to civility??And most tragic of all, the views they give voice to are just asfundamentalist, extremist, intolerant, totalitarian etc as those ofthe individuals and groups they hate so much!

A simple question please:If a nation's constitution is out of touch with the majority of its population,which should we change - the constitution or the population???Well, the answer is so obvious that it hardly needs spelling out:Of course we should change the constitution to reflect the majority views.

The contortions that Turkey is going through is perhaps the best currentexample of this dilemma and in the case of Turkey is a direct consequenceof a secular constitution being imposed upon a Muslim population withoutit being asked what it wanted.Whilst one can understand that it may not have been practically possible tohold a referendum or something similar in the aftermath of the collapse of theOttoman Empire at the end of World War 1, it is difficult to find any excuse notto do so as soon as possible afterwards, when things had stabilised.Of all Muslim nations, Turkey is perhaps the purest of all - whichever source youconsult you learn that more than 99% of the population are Muslim, whether itis 99,0 or 99,3 or 99,6 is hardly relevant, the fact is that it is a pure Muslim nationwith microscopic minorities of other faiths.In the mainstream media Turkey is invariably described as a "majority Muslim nation"and whilst technically correct it is a grossly misleading label as anything over 50%would mean a majority. I have on several occasions emailed the BBC about this andasked them to reconsider using the term.

The governing AK party, having won last year's elections with an incredible 46-point-something % (round that up to AK47??), an enviable increase of 12% over the last result,has a resounding mandate and is in a perfect position to redress that imbalance betweenconstitution and people and could do so fairly simply by putting a long list of amendmentsto a referendum. And it would probably do so if it felt secure that the generals would stayout of it all but after the famous attempted "e-coup" before Abdullah Gul's election tothe presidency it is clear that, as usual, the generals would prevent the views of the vastmajority being written into law. So much for democracy!To its credit, the European Union has made it very clear that the democratic process mustbe respected if Turkey wants to proceed as planned on the road to membership of the EU.Quite a dilemma for the EU as its insistence on this very issue directly or indirectly lendssupport to a popularly elected party whose Islamic roots are clear and deep - and to anoutside observer it seems that the green leaves of Islam could and would be sproutingfreely in Turkey if the secular elite, epitomised by the military, would accept the majorityverdict gracefully.

By not doing so, the minority is in effect asking the majority to change - and more orless openly threatening to intervene if that majority attempts to stand on its democratic rights.Clearly an unstable situation which must be resolved and as soon as possible.

And as for the EU supporting the elected goverment of Turkey - why is the EU not supportingthe fairly elected Hamas-government of Occupied Palestine?

05 September 2008

Almost all Danes, certainly the menfolk, would unreservedly andwholeheartedly say with genuine pride and respect that ourforefathers the Vikings (c800AD-c1100AD) were great guys thatwe can really relate to - whereas the very same people wouldundoubtedly equally strongly condemn the Taliban as outlandishfanatics with a death-wish.

May I ask the innocent little question: Why?Why the dramatic difference in attitudes when the similaritiesare so striking and so great?

For both groups, separated by a thousand years and thousands ofkilometres, share the following:

Your blood-line, your family, your clan, who you are, where you comefrom, are of the utmost importance, as is your personal honour andthat of your family, clan etc.

Hospitality towards strangers and travellers, including, if thesituation called for it, your worst enemies:I recall reading a report from Afghanistan where village elders hadarranged for some US soldiers to come on a visit, maybe in aneffort to understand why there are foreign soldiers occupying their land,and the soldiers described that they were certain some of the localsat the meeting were Taliban fighters, who remained courteous and politebut lacking the warmth and openness of the others.And the reason that the soldiers were neither captured nor shot norbeheaded was obviously to protect the honour of the elders who hadguaranteed the safety of the strangers for the duration of the encounter.With principles like that, who needs any man-made written laws?

Another case springs to mind:In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, the Taliban (quite correctlyof course!), refused to hand anyone over to the US in the absence ofcredible evidence that anyone on Afghan soil was involved.Assuming that Osama bin Laden was indeed in Afghanistan at the time,it would have been unthinkable for the Taliban to hand him over as hewas in the country as an honoured guest and friend, and we have thefeeling that even if evidence had been produced nobody would havebeen handed over - because it would betray the trust and honour ofthe people involved.Interestingly, the Taliban a little later did offer that any wanted personscould possibly be tried in a third country if Islamic law was applied -and the rest was silence because it is clear that the invasion and occupationof both Afghanistan and Iraq were planned long in advance, probably evenbefore GW Bush was elected!

The Vikings would behave in more or less the same manner, providingfood and shelter as required if, say, members of a feuding clan werepassing through the valley, even sitting at the same long table as theirenemies, who had to leave their heavy weapons outside, bringing onlylight personal weapons inside, relying entirely for their security, indeedtheir survival, on the integrity of the hosts.

Any excuse to prove your manliness - almost any statement could betaken as a challenge to "choose your weapons" and hand-to-handcombat would then settle the issue and determine who was the betterman of the two.

Now, if these are the men and the attitudes and actions we admire in"the best of men" from our own past, why can we not recognise the samequalities in a different group today and respect and applaud them -is it simply because it is all happening now or because it is takingplace in a far-off land?

A few words about Allah and Valhalla:Despite the close similarity between the words there are no linguisticlinks to be found whatsoever. Valhalla, which literally means battlefield-hall,was the abode of the Vikings who had fallen honourably in battle and everyday they would wake up, go out on the battlefield and fight their last battleover again, die once more, to be brought into Valhalla to be revived byattending maidens, the Valkyries, and treated to a banquet of pork andmead (apple cider fermented with honey), accompanied by story-tellingand recitals of poetry.

And how did you determine how someone had fallen honourably?Simple - if the deadly wounds were at the front of the body it provedthat you were not killed trying to run away and you were thereforeeligible for Valhalla, for which "proper Viking men" openly longed.The similarity with Muslim Jihadists receiving instant resurrection andgoing straight to Jannah/Paradise without having to wait in barzakh/burzakhlike "normal" Muslims is obvious and striking.Replace the haram pork and mead with halal fruits and spring water,replace the Valkyries with the dark-eyed Houris, and the situationsare absolutely parallell.

So, can we spot the difference?Of course there are differences too - the most obvious being the AK47!Which is simply an indication of the intervening 1000 years and advancesin technology - the most deadly weapons of the Vikings were the bestavaiable in their day and their smiths and craftsmen did much to improveexisting techniques.

As a fairly recent convert/revert to Islam (and you can read about that in mypoem "My Journey to Islam", no 032 on Poems Index on my website)I am of course learning more about all things Islamic.Probably the biggest practical question is this: Which way do I integrate?In a country like Denmark, where relations between "locals" and "foreigners"seem to get worse by the month, simply by becoming a Muslim I havedistanced myself from mainstream Denmark, in a way willingly segregatingmyself from national norms.I still wear Western clothes (simple and comfortable and all from natural fibres,and nothing trendy or fashionable please!) but I have a feeling that might change.As I am no longer working, in the ordinary sense of the word, I am free of those"what do I wear" considerations and restrictions.I have had a full beard ever since it would grow (for a defence of beards readpoem no 048 on Poems Index, "Grow Your Own"), when I was 19 or so, but itis bigger and wilder now since becoming a Muslim.

Were I a female convert/revert I would certainly wear the headscarf/hijab asthere are two clear exhortations in the Quran for women to cover (24:31 and33:59) although, as I understand it, the exact degree of cover can be, andhas been, argued by the scholars and there may be no uniform opinion orinterpretation.

I have a suspicion that many sisters and brothers here in Denmark do notwear the hijab or do not grow beards simply in an effort to "blend in" moreeasily or to be openly seen to make an extra effort to "fit in" and that isperfectly understandable given the current situation.But, if true, it is also sad because in a free and open society, which Denmarkstill claims to be, there should be no such problems and no such needs,and in law of course there aren't any problems, as para 70 in the Danishconstitution specifically guarantees equal rights (and duties of course!)for all regardless of faith or race.Easy to legislate - much harder to implement!

And my older brother is one of them!He is 5 years older than me and has only been outside Denmark twice in hislong life and then only briefly (first trip a few hours tax-free shopping andsecond trip about 2 weeks).

I remember, back in the sixties, when the first of the “new-wave” immigrantsstarted to arrive, mainly from (then) Yugoslavia and Turkey.Actually they were guest workers, actively encouraged by the Danish government to come here.My brother used to call them date-pickers, regardless where they came fromand it was clear that he would rather they did not come.

Many years later, when I was back in Denmark in 2001, his favourite joke was:”Did you know that the Supplementary Benefit Law is the first chapter of the Quran?” – which he thought was very funny.Although I was still several years away from formally becoming a practising Muslim I had very strong sympathies and empathies for Islam and Muslims.So, obviously, I was not amused, in fact I was offended, not only on behalf ofIslam and Muslims but in a more general way – that my older brother still hadsuch a limited view of the world.

True to form, he proudly votes for the far-right Danish People’s Party (founded in 1995), as do sadly also both of my two nieces and their husbands.In last November’s general election the DPP got almost 14% of the votes andtherefore 25 seats in the 179-member parliament, an increase of 1 from the previous election.Can anyone explain why so many in such an (otherwise) educated and enlightened nation as Denmark vote for such simplistic not to say primitive concepts and ideas??

As you all know, this is currently not just a Danish phenomenon – many other European nations face the same problem.That well-known Islamophobe Geert Wilders, Dutch MP, visited Copenhagen a few weeks ago and spoke to several hundred members, including parliamentarians, of the DPP. His suggested “solution” to the “problem” of the creeping Islamisation of Europe? 1. Ban the Quran -2. Close Islamic schools -3. Stop immigration. It is desperately sad that an otherwise intelligent man can utter such fascistic nonsense and sadder still that so many take him seriously! Whatever else it may be, it is precisely as fundamentalist, radical, extremist, inflammatory etc (you recognise the terms!) as the groups he and others like him hate so much!As an aside, presumably Geert Wilders would still welcome immigration to theEU from both America and Israel?!!?He is known to have visited Israel more than 40 times and of course he is freeto travel where he wants but it does raise serious questions about where he gets his instructions from.

If such attitudes become the prevailing ones, which of course is not the case yet but in Denmark we are approaching a critical point, what chances are therefor Muslims, and other minorities for that matter but Muslims are overwhelming seen as “the problem and the threat”, to make a successof integration even if they sincerely want to?The way my brother speaks, he makes it totally obvious that either they should behave like us or “go back where they came from” as he so childishly puts it, and if they don’t want to go we should throw them out.Denmark in fact a few years ago introduced a voluntary repatriation scheme, offering substantial financial incentives to enable those who accepted the deal to start up again in their home countries.I have no statistics to hand at the moment as to whether the plan has been a success or failure but will report back here if and when I find out.But my feeling is that it is most unlikely to be popular.

30 July 2008

Welcome to my place!Should you decide to spend some timebrowsing my website you will find that thesection with poems is becoming increasinglyimportant.Please read this brief post now -Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy.....

I wrote that on 11 April 2007 and, looking back,it seems that subconsciously I knew what washappening already for since then I have onlywritten a handful of ordinary posts, and notreally about current affairs, but my collectionof published poems has grown from5 poems totalling 744 linesto (as of today 28 June 2011)144 poems totalling 20,191 linesand there seems to be no slowing down, pluswriting a 400-page book about Islamophobiawhich was published last January.

Even so, should you become a regular visitor tomy website -and I hope that you will- expectmost of the activity to be in the poems section.But of course Site News will always keep youupdated on what is new.

Thank you for visiting my website and if youlike it please tell all your friends!

Post No 4Denmark has been a Christian country for at least 1000 years – and that’s official:

Proudly proclaimed in pictures and runes on the larger of the two Jelling stones in southern Jutland, the Danish mainland which connects with Germany and the rest of the continent.

It says: "King Harald ordered this monument made in memory of Gorm, his father, and in memory of Thyre, his mother; that Harald who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian."

This was done by King Harald Bluetooth (935 AD-985 AD), son of King Gorm the Old and Queen Thyra, as far as it can be pinpointed to one specific year it was in 965 AD, and thus roughly four generations after the French missionary - later Saint - Ansgar came to Denmark in 826 AD as an envoy of the catholic bishop of Bremen/Hamburg, but several generations passed before we can say that Christianity was the dominant belief system in the country as a whole and that country may not have been already a coherent Denmark – more likely it was several petty kingdoms at that time.

Catholicism came to an end in Denmark around 1520 with the Reformation of Martin Luther and the country has remained Lutheran-Protestant ever since.

Denmark has an international reputation for being ultra-secular and ultra-permissive and in many ways that is of course true, but did you know that the Lutheran-Protestant church is the official state church, enshrined in the Danish constitution’s para 4 and as such is supported largely.

And that means paid for from the bishops to the local priests and grave-diggers to the upkeep and maintenance of all churches and associated buildings and infrastructure by the state, meaning through taxes – unless you specifically opt out of paying the special church-tax (only about 0.5% of your total taxation) but still you can be as secular as you like but you may unwittingly pay the church tax all your life without knowing it! I opted out of church-tax when I first started paying tax when I was 18 or so.

Para 70 of our constitution guarantees religious freedom for all citizens and specifically prohibits any form of discrimination on the basis of religion or race – but did you know that religious freedom does not extend to our monarch, currently Queen Margrethe II (who is a cousin of the Queen of England), for para 6 of the constitution states that the regent MUST be a lutheran-protestant but does not have to be a member of the church!

So, whether he or she wants to or not – no freedom of choice there! I find that quite extraordinary and in a way quite comical.

Christianity is generally seen here as something typically Danish, indeed one of the more extreme members of that already extreme right-wing party the Danish People’s Party (more about that another time!), Soren Krarup, who is both an MP and a theologian and a priest, has stated bluntly that you cannot be truly Danish unless you are a Christian.

I have not yet had the opportunity to debate him in public but I would like to ask him the following:

- How on earth can it be seen to more “truly Danish” to subscribe to a belief-system which grew up around a Jew from Palestine (Jesus-Isa) than embracing a faith which grew up around an Arab from Arabia (of course Muhammad – pbuh/saws)???- It is interesting to speculate: Suppose that some of the early Muslims had not only spread South and West and East and North locally but travelled much further North than they did – they would have had plenty of time to have arrived in Northern Europe and Denmark say around 700 even if they had walked all the way, that is well over a hundred years, or about 4 generations, before 826 and the Ansgar that I mentioned at the beginning.

Meaning of course that Denmark could well have been a Muslim country for 1300 years or so instead of Christian for 1000 years – with a mosque in every village and the prayers call ringing out 5 times a day!And not only Denmark of course.....Food for thought for all Islamophobes!!

It is also obvious from the wording of the runic inscription at Jelling that the Danes (and possibly also Denmark as a country) existed before they were "made Christian" by Harald.

So, logically, if you wish to be "truly Danish" you should become a pagan and worship the old gods of the Vikings like Odin-Woden-Wotan (the god of wisdom who also gave his name to Wednesday!) or Thor (thunder / power + Thursday!) or much older fertility gods like Frej-Frey (male) and Freja-Freya (female) who collectively gave their name to Friday.

Some of the early kings and other rulers who accepted Christianity may well have done so out of conviction and sincerity – but most historians believe that they were at least as attracted by the enormous unifying influence that the new faith gave them, an influence which could be, and was, used for welding smaller realms together into larger “proper” kingdoms – in short, to increasetheir strategic power and magnify their self-glorification. And that is a very understandable and human thing to do – if you get the opportunity.

Incidentally, for many years, including of course all the time I lived on my sailing yacht VIKING, I always carried around my neck a pendant in the form of a Thors-hammer (which is called Mjolnir and is used by Thor to bash the clouds, so creating thunder and lightning) – they are very popular with Danish men and, if you take them seriously, they signify that you still embrace the old religionand the old gods as opposed to the new.

They were widely used throughout the Viking age (c800-c1100) when Christianity began making inroads.

Others preferred the cross. Archaeologists have unearthed a mould for casting jewellery, it is a cast made of a single piece of soap-stone (a very soft rock ideally suited for moulds) and has room for casting 3 pieces of jewellery in one operation – 2 of one and 1 of the other!!I cannot remember whether it is 2 crosses and 1 Thors-hammer or the other way round but what is interesting is that the craftsman and the vendor did not particularly care what the customer believed in, so long as it was good for business – some things never change!

Is this maybe a distant forerunner of the European Union?!!?

Personally, having spent half my life in other countries, I do not feel particularly Danish one way or the other and I am quite content to consider myself a Muslim world citizen - if that makes me in any way less Danish then that is a small price to pay!